A number of databases and websites maintain galleries of page layout designs. These galleries help provide design inspiration and ideas to page layout designers by providing example page layout designs in a variety of different styles. However, these page layout design galleries provide very limited browsing mechanisms. Typically, a designer browses the various designs in a page layout gallery by clicking through pages of layout design examples one page at a time. The designer may be looking for page layout examples that exhibit particular style features. However, due to the limiting browsing mechanisms of the page layout gallery, the designer may end up looking at many irrelevant pages before finding a few page layout examples that match the designer's desired style features. These conventional galleries of page layout designs provide limited, if any, mechanisms for a designer to search for page layout designs that match a particular desired style.
Conventional search methods are typically based on keywords. However, keywords are often not effective at describing a design. It is not uncommon for a designer to prefer one page layout design over another, but not be able to describe an exact cause for the design preference. This is partially due to the fact that page layout designs often evoke emotions, in addition to conveying information. Trying to describe a design using words may be difficult for a designer and may lead to imprecise descriptions. Page layout designs are often described with style terms, such as “minimalist,” “colorful,” “modern,” or “clean,” but also with emotional terms, such as “beautiful,” “ugly,” “exciting,” or “depressing.” A conventional keyword search is not an effective mechanism for a designer to locate preferred design styles in galleries containing page layout designs.